The new dominion

Our ruling dispensations have reduced an abundantly endowed Pakistan to a pauper state. With a mere $4 billion in our kitty, we have a mammoth external debt and liabilities of $126.3 billion; $77.5 billion are due for payment in the next three years. By year end, our non-existent growth is expected to retard to -1.90 per cent.

A recent headline in these pages had a minister announcing “Thar coal is the future of Pakistan”. Uttered ad nauseam, the promised future remains a mirage. Africa’s mineral export stands at over $400 billion. It is home to 90 per cent of the world’s chromium and platinum, 40 of gold and 20 per cent of oil and gas reserves. Striking gold or discovering oil conjures up instant riches. Starkly, most African nations are mired in extreme poverty and disease. Fifty per cent of its population, especially in the sub-Saharan region, earns less than $1.25 a day.

Calling it the paradox of plenty, experts unanimously cite corruption, political instability, dysfunctional institutions and a shoddy justice system as the main drivers of this scourge. In such nations, the dividends of loot and plunder are so enormous that a power-elite emerges to benefit from it. Taking over the state, their rapacious governance becomes a status quo that they maintain by all means and at all costs. In the post empire era, this is the new dominion that rules with ruthless impunity.

Pakistan is a land of abundant bounties. Reko Diq has proven gold and copper reserves worth $260 billion and estimated ones of $3 trillion. The second largest in the world, Thar coal reserves at 175 billion tons translate into 618 billion barrels of crude oil; twice the volume of the top four oil-producing countries. At Saudi Arabia’s current oil production, they would last more than 200 years. Our 1046 kilometer coastline has 43000 MW wind energy potential. We are one of seven nuclear powers; yet we remain an energy starved country.

Pakistan receives around 145 million acre feet of water annually. Our retaining capacity is a mere 13.7 million acre feet. This is decreasing at an alarming pace due to the depleting storage capacity of Tarbela and Mangla Dams that receive almost 500,000 tons of silt deposits each day. Due to lack of water reservoirs, we dump $22 billion worth of water each year into the sea. Experts warn that, by 2025, we may run dry.

Pakistan is ranked as the eight most vulnerable country to climate change. The Ministry of Climate Change reported $80 billion lost to weather calamities between 1996 and 2016. In this period, 156 extreme weather conditions resulted in loss of precious lives, mass displacements, with damage to crops and infrastructure taking a massive toll.

Given our implosive policies, eminent economist Dr Hafiz Pasha asserts in his book ‘Growth and Inequality in Pakistan: Agenda for Reforms’ that we lost a colossal $252 billion due to terrorism induced by our part in an alien war. Tragically, 83000 precious lives were lost to the implosive decision.

The ravages we have wrought on our motherland are eerily similar to the one that forced East Pakistan to drift away. Our haughty attitude and denial of franchise ensured the same. Today, Bangladesh is cited as an economic miracle. One taka is equivalent to Rs2.66 and their per capita income is 60 per cent higher than us. At $32 billion, the IMF forecasts its foreign reserves to exceed $50 billion by the next three years. At $6.2 billion in 1972, the total GDP of Bangladesh now stands at $460.75 billion.

Bangladesh’s economy has recorded an amazing growth rate of an average 7.0 per cent since the last nine years. Producing a mere 100 thousand cotton bales, insufficient for even a single spinning mill, it has emerged as one of the largest contributors to the global readymade garment (RMG) sector. Standing at $34 billion in 2022, RMG exports through July-January 2022-23 read at $27.42 billion. The target by 2030, a year forecast to see Bangladesh as the 26th global economy, is set at $100 billion.

Famed economist Daron Acemoglou emphasizes in his bestselling ‘Why nations fail’ that predation and extraction leads to a nation’s downfall. A delivering governance system, an antithesis of corruption, ensures political, economic and social organization; three imperatives for any viable nation. Our power-elite, dictators and civilian autocrats alike, have remained oblivious to the same. Self-ordained messiahs’ now strut around the world, pleading unabashedly for lifesaving morsels and further mortgaging our already debt-ridden lives.

British PM Harold Macmillan once described a foreign secretary as someone always hovering between the cliché and indiscretion. China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, devoid of any Macmillan dilemmas, is known in the West as the wolf warrior because of his no-nonsense attitude. On display in his recent maiden visit to Pakistan, he minced no words while advising us to “build consensus and uphold stability”; a must to overcome our dire economic and security challenges. As soon as he left, our kamikaze mindset took over; the resulting unprecedented events and images made headlines the world over.

Despite the fallacious rhetoric, we have never been a viable, secure and truly sovereign country. Our vegetative state is the devastating outcome of the policies of a conceited and totally self-centered power-elite. In this new dominion only one thing outdoes these traits – their undiminished sense of entitlement to rule over us.

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com